HSH 109: Running Your Business Like Clockwork with Mike Michalowicz
Ever wonder how you can get out of your business so you can get more done, enjoy like and still scale successfully? In this episode I’m joined by Mike Michalowicz, the author of the perennial bestseller Profit First, the cult classic The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, and other revered small business books, and he has spent 6 years seeking the solution entrepreneurs need — how to get more done while working less – and he discovered it. Mike is here to talk about his recently released book Clockwork, and I know you’re going to get a ton of value from his simple, yet highly impactful, strategies!
Mike is now a full-time author, but he was an entrepreneur for about 20 years, starting and selling two companies in that time. It was his experience of almost losing everything with one of his companies that showed him he didn’t know everything about entrepreneurship, and it partly led to him studying the missteps in business he took and how they could be avoided by others.
He reveals that the intention for his new book Clockwork is that after reading it, you’ll be able to design your business so that it runs itself.
Mike says that productivity in business is necessary, but it’s not the solution; rather it’s all about organizational efficiency. He learned that productivity can be a trap, because the moment you get more things done it means you just have more time to do more things.
It goes without saying that your business needs to be productive, but as an owner your objective should be to extract yourself from the business so that you can manage the strategy, but not do the actual work inside of it.
He’s come up with the “4 D’s” system, which says that the categories of activities in a business are: doing, deciding, delegating and designing. We should be aiming to get to the designing phase, but too quick of a shift to this could lead to instant failure. Mike recommends starting small by taking some time at the start of each week to analyze what’s working, and what isn’t, in your business. By doing this, you’ll start building your “design muscle.”
Every business must go through a sequence of attracting clients, converting them, delivering products and/or services and collecting payment, or what Mike calls the “ACDC Model.” There’s a critical role called the QBR, or “Queen Bee Role”, that has to happen for this sequence to run efficiently. Each business needs to identify this critical role that your survival hinges on. Protect it at all costs!
In order to identify the Queen Bee Role, first determine what you want your company to be world famous for, or focus on what you’re already known for.
Mike adds that it’s important to realize that the QBR is not a person, it’s a role, but whoever is serving the QBR must be protected to do that work. If they’re failing to do that, they must be replaced immediately.
Mike now has 30 to 40 people speaking on the concepts he writes about, because he realized that the amount of time he has to do this himself is limited.
The one action item he recommends to business owners is to take a 4-week vacation. This is the ultimate test for a company’s ability to perform on its own.
LINKS:
http://clockworkbymikemichalowicz.com/
